Diabetic patients are particularly susceptible to wounds on their feet due to a loss of sensation, which can result in the formation of wounds (ulcers). As wound healing process in diabetic patient is slow or sometimes absent, diabetic foot ulcers don’t heal well and they have an increased exposure and risk towards infections, which may result in gangrene and in some cases, lower-limb amputation if the condition persist. This project aims to create a novel wound healing device TPODD (Therapeutic Patch for On-Demand Delivery), which will help in initiating, regulating and speeding up the body’s natural wound healing processes. TPODD will have two essential components. The first is collagen, which is present naturally in our body and wound-healing cells like to attach and multiply on this material to regenerate skin. To instruct these cells to perform wound-healing tasks (for example growing blood vessels in the scaffold), we will introduce depots within the collagen that will contain drugs (the “instructions”) within a gel like material that will keep the drugs in place. Depots can be stimulated to release drug at a specific timepoint using ultrasound, and these drugs will then instruct cells to carry out healing task in the correct sequence. The TPODD can be applied directly to the site of the diabetic wound. In this project we will work out the fabrication techniques for TPODD and the control parameters for releasing the drugs at the right times.
